Retired

When you're too cheap to by a smoke detector.

This is Lisa Coker. She was arrested last weekend in Tampa, FL after she tried to bust into her ex-boyfriend's wedding armed with a crow bar and a razor blade. Lisa was met by the mother of that groom who took 11 stitches to close up her wounds.
Go ahead, work with this one on your own. There is SO much to be mined from this story.

I put new tires on my bicycle this afternoon. Tight fit, especially compared to the original tires that had worn thin and needed to be replaced. The down side to tires that go on too easily is that they can also come off too easily, especially when taking a corner at speed. Not good! So the wrestling match to get these new Michelin's on was worth the effort.

I spent most of the day working on year 2 of the curriculum. I got two lessons in the Leader's Guide done. Only 22 more to go.

I saw in a news story online that Zondervan is working on a new edition of the NIV. This one will be handwritten. They're going to make stops in several cities across the country and have 31,000 people write out a few verses each. Most of the writers will be ordinary people, but they hope to get some noteworthy Christians - Billy Graham and Pres. Bush were mentioned - to write sections.
I can imagine the marketing program that will go with this project once it's done. "You can own a Bible handwritten by God's people, including such important believers as...."

Back in the day God's Word could carry its own weight. But sadly, those days are gone. Now he needs help from good people like those at Zondervan. If it weren't for their hard work coming up with new ways to package Scripture it's likely no one would buy Bibles anymore. Bibles for Tweens, Bibles for women of color, Bibles for athletes, Bibles for divorced people, Bibles for non-swimmers.....

Of course we owe all of this to the guy who figured out that putting the words Jesus spoke in red ink would help us know which words were really important and which words we could sort of almost kinda ignore. All those centuries of thinking the whole Bible was fully inspired were finally cleared up with nothing more than a little red ink. Stroke of genius!

That set the stage for the now ubiquitous Study Bible, that indispensable ingredient to spiritual growth. Why, just this last Sunday we learned, thanks to the Study Bible one of the people had, that the Nephilim of Genesis 9 were fearsome giants who stood between 8'6" and 9'6" tall. I don't know how they are so certain of that height but hey, the study note is in the Bible so it must be true. (Makes you feel sorry for the poor guy who was only 8'5" tall. He just gets labeled "really tall dude." Bummer.)

All of this has me feeling totally inadequate. I got my Bible several years ago and it doesn't have any study notes at all. Yes, I got red letters - try buying a Bible without that feature - but beyond that all I have is, uhm, er, God's Word. Not only am I left without any guidance on the height of the Nephilim, but I don't know who wrote Hebrews or the year Mark wrote his Gospel.
What am I going to do?

OK, watch this without wincing. In fact, I'm betting you can't watch it sitting still.
Lavalise

G'night